


The Ever-Changing Stars (or, Now It's Just Getting Silly)

by Mal-3 (The_Fenspace_Collective)



Series: Candle In The Dark: A Peculiar Saga of the Sea of Time [9]
Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior, Fenspace
Genre: Gen, Space Norse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1445293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Fenspace_Collective/pseuds/Mal-3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The JàrnFòlk (literally 'Iron People') are a society of deep Periphery denizens residing approximately 250 light years spinward of Columbus. The JàrnFòlk inhabit four worlds—Hamar, Trondheim, Ålborg and Hofn. The JàrnFòlk left the Inner Sphere as refugees and arrived in the Deep Periphery as a result of the Draconis Combine's harsh treatment of Rasalhagian worlds during the 2500s." (sarna.net)</p>
<p>It's 3021 and a Jarnfolk trading vessel has stumbled across a strange patch of space where the stars are wrong. What they find inside will change Jarnfolk society forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ever-Changing Stars (or, Now It's Just Getting Silly)

_Excerpt from “ A People’s History of the Gernsback Expanse” by Meryl Campbell (Gondor Free University Press, Arda, 3124):_

“It would be hard to find two better contrasts of the Terran and the Tellurian mindsets than the two parties involved in the Jarnfolk contact. An open and largely trusting culture meeting a more reserved and suspicious one is a story that has played out numerous times in human history, and rarely to the open culture’s benefit. In the meeting between the trading ship _Skellan Farseer_ and the picket boat _Captain Haddock_ , however, we see something interesting happen; a rare instance where a meeting of cultures doesn’t end badly for either side.

The Free People’s Serene Temporal Republic of Gallifrey was a syndicalist commune founded in 2019 TD by a splinter group of Venusians dissatisfied with that planet’s constitutional monarchy, and the commune’s settlement of Tau Ceti g was sponsored by a Soviet government seeking to maintain claims on the system. Gallifrey was a very dramatic place, full of breathtaking scenery, and the operatic nature of the planet appealed to the early settlers as a world where Wagner met Sergio Leone, with a little _Gekidan Inu Curry_ thrown in for flavor. This combination gave the main settlement of Ptichka’s Landing a freewheeling, Bohemian air despite its relative size; Gallifrey was the smallest of the major exosolar colonies, boasting a grand total of 2,000 permanent residents in 2024 TD.

On the other side of the equation were the Jarnfolk. The Jarnfolk were refugees from the Rasalhauge worlds who fled the Draconis Combine in the early 26th century and developed their society based on Rasalhaugian lines and vague notions of Scandinavian traditions brought from old Terra. The name ‘Jarnfolk’ translates as ‘Iron People’ and it’s easy to see why. As a hunted minority in Kurita territory and settling on a small group of marginal worlds on the edge of the Vela Nebula, the Jarnfolk’s founders believed they needed to be as hard as iron to survive. This created an insular culture but also a fairly successful one. The Jarnfolk became fairly wealthy by Periphery standards as traders in the Trans-Coalsack region and around the fringes of the Inner Sphere, connecting entities as disparate as the Hansa and Tortugans.

Based on the Jarnfolk’s far-flung enterprise it’s not surprising that they would come across the Fen. It is a little surprising they didn’t come across the Sea of Time sooner; several Jarnfolk trade routes cut across the Gernsback Expanse in general, and one right across the Sea in particular. The common explanation is that trade along the downspin Periphery was lagging due to the slow end of the Third Succession War. Others claim, with some corroborating evidence, that other traders had in fact encountered the Sea of Time before 3021, only their captains weren’t as cautious and jumped blind…”

~***~

_Excerpt from “ Contact!: Book One of the Gernsback Saga, a David Ryder™ Adventure” by Kristin Pitt (Farstar Books, Alpheratz, 3053):_

**Prologue**

**Unknown Space, August 3021**

Captain Jakob Hermansen, a tall man weathered in that way only a man who lived his entire life on the spacelanes can be, peered at the navigational display in mild incomprehension. The ghostly images of planets in the holotank were unfamiliar, though that wasn’t such an odd thing for a trader on the outer Periphery routes. And yet they were in very unfamiliar space. Ever since curiosity had gotten the better of him some weeks past when skirting the Gernsback Expanse en route for the Tortugas, the Jarnfolk jumpship _Skellan Farseer_ , one of the finest ships in the Hoeg family fleet, had apparently dropped off the face of the known galaxy. The comforting wispy bulk of the Gum Nebula barely a hundred and fifty light years away was nowhere to be seen, which spooked the crew. To be honest, it didn’t do Hermansen much good, either.

Hermansen turned to his navigator and second-in-command, Piotr Mittelmind. “What have we found, Piotr?”

Mittelmind, a burly man of mixed Russian and Asian stock, shrugged. “Damned if I know, Captain. Our charts of the Gernsback Expanse don’t have any stars like this one within three jumps of our estimated position. And it’s not drift either; stars don’t change like this, not this quickly.” He shook his head in frustration and Hermansen couldn’t help but empathize. 

“Do we have any idea where we are?”

“Some, but it makes no sense. The navigation computer has made a spectral match of the star. According to the machine, we’re at the Tau Ceti nadir point.”

Hermansen gaped. “Tau Ceti? Is this a misjump?”

Mittelmind shook his head. “If it is then it’s a misjump more spectacular than any I’ve ever heard of before, because while the damned computer thinks that star is Tau Ceti, those planets are not the New Earth system.” He pointed at the holographic images in the tank. “There are six worlds, like New Earth. But look at this: the outermost planet is a small gas giant, and four more are huge terrestrials unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a life bearing system before. And all of these planets are within two AU of the star, that’s something completely unprecedented in our understanding of how solar systems are formed.”

(…) “ _Unidentified spacecraft,_ ” the strange little intruder’s captain said over the radio, “ _this is the Love and Rage Collective Defense Force cruiser_ Captain Haddock _, requesting an ID and communications check._ ”

Hermansen raised an eyebrow in surprise. “English,” he said. “And what is this ‘Love and Rage Collective,’ do you think?”

Mittelmind shook his head. “Must be new here,” he said. Hermansen laughed.

“Much like we are, Piotr,” he replied. 

“Shall we respond?”

Hermansen thought it over. A colony with a lone ASF for defense was likely a leftover or refugee from the fighter-loving Outworlds. Furthermore, a colony with an ASF that could make the trip from the planet to the jump point in less than a day… that suggested technology. Very advanced technology. If Hermansen could bring back a sample to the Jarnfolk then it might be a stepping stone to bigger and better things for the _Farseer_ and for Hermansen himself.

“Give me the microphone,” he said, then spoke directly to the unknown craft. “ _Captain Haddock_ , this is the trading vessel _Skellan Farseer_ out of the Trondheim system.”

“ _Well,_ Farseer _, welcome to the Free People’s Serene Temporal Republic of Gallifrey, an outlying satrap of the United Federation of Planets._ ” The man onboard _Haddock_ said it with a great deal of majestic pomposity, leaving Hermansen and his crew to imagine what kind of flourish they would have seen had this been a video conversation. “ _Now that you’ve said who you are,” Haddock_ continued in a more businesslike tone, “ _mind explaining what you’re doing here?_ ”

“We have no ill intentions toward your people, _Haddock_.” Which was true as far as it went. Hermansen was a peaceful man at heart, and even if he intended to cheat this ‘Free People’s Republic’ out of their mystery technology he wouldn’t do it at gunpoint. That was just uncouth. “However, we do seem to be a little… lost.” 

“ _Lost? Welcome! There, you’re found. Isn’t hospitality amazing? It has transformative powers. The only thing missing is the smell of hot food. I have none. For that we need to go to Gallifrey._ ”

“I see. Your offer is appreciated, _Haddock_ , and we are interested in opening relations with your world. We’ve never heard of a Gallifrey, and we travel this area more than many. How did you come to settle here?”

“ _That is a very interesting question,_ Farseer _,_ ” _Haddock_ replied. “ _One which has questions of its own attached._ ”

_Kristin Pitt is a former spacecraft engineer, amateur archaeologist and author of the best-selling David Ryder™ novels._ Contact! _is the first in a series of “spaceport fiction” thrillers based on the initial contact with the Gernsback Expanse._

~***~

_Excerpt from “ Where the Weird Things Are: The Gernsback Expanse In It’s Own Words” (Ballantine, Tellus, 3046):_

“GUARDIAN picked it up first, of course. That was what it was supposed to do, after all. Of course, we probably wouldn’t have heard about it for hours except that Lin had hacked the comms and made sure it cc’d the Landing whenever an alert went out. Centralization’s a Federation thing, sometimes they take it too far. Anyway, so the alert goes out and we’re wondering what to do next. Gallifrey was still a small colony, not more’n twenty thousand people and most of ‘em were newbies. As the oldest and best established settlement in the Temporal Republic - pause for laughter - it was up to the Landing to take care of the situation.

So we did. More or less. Willow got on the horn with Governor Morales in the NCR across the bay and told them ‘hey, we’ve got a jumpship in system, might wanna think about starting a shelter drill just in case,’ then she called Arrakeen out in the BFE and told ‘em the same thing, and since they were out in, you know, the wasteland where nobody gave a shit she added a little of the ol’ Harry Dean Stanton at the end. You know, just in case. I’m _pretty_ sure somebody notified Night Vale, but they never said anything and I think some of us were hoping that if the jumper was hostile they’d land there and well, problem solved. 

Next thing on the agenda was deciding if we should intercept or not. By some bit of pretty wacky political maneuvering - God bless the Generalissimo - the whole Love and Rage Collective were officially part of XCOM Reserves, so we had the leeway. Thing was, we had only the one Bolithio on hand, and the _Haddock_ was basically Boskone War surplus. Now, a bunch of us were Earthside for the big invasion - I flew S &R after the shooting stopped, still have nightmares about some of the shit I saw - and we knew damn well that the _Haddock_ was pretty much a one-and-done if the jumper decided to make it a fight. On the other hand, there was a chance that one Bolithio could fuck up a jumper’s engines before getting cacked, and if we could fuck them up bad enough then we could hold out until XCOM proper got here with all their guns.

Once we got Jerry bundled up and in the _Haddock_ , the smart thing would’ve been to start evacuating the town and heading upriver into the mountains. This being Gallifrey, everybody instead went to the Dude & Catastrophe, which was the bar we used in lieu of a town hall back then, to sit around the flatscreens, drink, and wait for word. Took the Haddock the better part of a day to get from Gallifrey to the jump point, all of it boring as hell. So we were mostly pretty smashed when they finally got within visual range.

I remember that the jumper was a lot prettier than the ones we grabbed after the invasion: red paint with white accents and gold knotwork on all the flattish surfaces, very stylish. It was pretty well-maintained too, not a slapdash repair job in sight. Said that whoever owned this thing took care of it. We all started making bets on who it was: I bet it was a Combine ship based on all the red. Willow bet it was Comstar, because who else would be in the Expanse with us. I know, right? Really funny after that business on Epsilon Pegasi a couple years back. Anyway, I don’t remember that anyone actually won the betting pool, but that might just’ve been the booze. All I know is I didn’t win, and that’s enough.

So Jerry gets close enough to hail, and the _Haddock_ ’s got an interwave link so of course we’re all listening in and the Farseer announces itself as Jarnfolk. And we’re all thinking ‘so what the fuck is a Jarnfolk?’ We’ve all got the books, right, I think they were standard equipment with the noob colonists, and we’re searching through them all looking for intel we can feed to Jerry. Then there’s a serious kick in the ass: there’s a fair bit of stuff on the Jarnfolk but all of it is post-Clan and / or Catalyst stuff, and who the hell knows if that’s accurate. So Fred gets on the horn with Jerry, tells ‘im that the Jarnfolk look mostly harmless so might as well invite them down to the planet. And that’s how we had Space Norse invade Gallifrey.”

~***~

_Excerpt from “ Shifting tides: how Tellus changed the balance of power in the Periphery” by Augustin Durante (Journal of Taurian History, Taurus, 3090):_

“…Contact with Fenspace triggered significant upheavals within Jarnfolk society, but not for the reasons most would assume. While the introduction of handwavium caused economic and political shocks, these were largely mitigated by the Jarnfolk’s own circumstances. As a nation of long-distance traders the Jarnfolk were, unlike the paranoid and fearful democracies of Tellus, used to dealing with and incorporating advanced technology into their cultural matrix. The upheaval within Jarnfolk society came instead from the other cargoes launched by Tellurian merchants: their culture.

The neo-Scandinavian culture of the Jarnfolk was based loosely on that of the Rasalhauge worlds, a collection of planets originally settled by people from the far northern edge of Europe on Old Terra. This culture had been annexed by the Draconis Combine and then suppressed with varying degrees of success and / or brutality up until the Last Succession War. The Jarnfolk’s ancestors were native Rasalhaugians who fled the Combine in the late 25th century during one of these suppressions. The society the refugees formed was based on a complex network of semi-feudal extended families tied together by interlocking chains of honor, duty and vendetta, with a united neo-Scandinavian identity maintaining just enough solidarity to keep Jarnfolk society from fracturing or imploding.

Tellurian contact changed all that. The magic of handwavium was certainly of interest to the great families, but of greater interest was the sudden arrival of a clone of Old Terra almost right on their doorstep. Jarnfolk identity was based on Rasalhagian identity, which was based on Scandinavian identity, and for a very long time the Jarnfolk had only a handful of old records from Rasalhauge and Old Terra to draw from for patching holes in the cultural identity. Now with a Terra of their own, with historical records untouched - and in the minds of the Jarnfolk uncorrupted - by Inner Sphere powers, a revival of traditional Scandinavian identity blossomed in the Jarnfolk worlds. This revival was compounded by numerous Fen works on ‘space Vikings’ like the _Mighty Thor_ comic series, which caught the imagination of the younger generations…

(…) Handwavium made fewer inroads with the Jarnfolk in the first few years post-contact than it did elsewhere in the galaxy, though as many Fen are overly fond of pointing out once handwavium gets somewhere it stays there forever. By dint of proximity the Jarnfolk were among the first to extract raw handwavium from waved goods and replicate it, apparently in an attempt to cultivate an independent source of the material. As always however, handwavium could not be denied and spread to private citizens in Trondheim, and then across the other Jarnfolk planets.

The combination of the ongoing cultural revival and the escape of handwavium into the society at large produced a number of very interesting idiosyncrasies with Jarnfolk wavetech. The best known of course is the Asgardian (or Norse-Kirby) school of design which can be found everywhere Jarnfolk and their goods are traded. Other quirks include the use of techno-skalds to sing to handwaved devices and the thankfully rare mutant Jotuns…

(…) The Tellurian contact instigated an upheaval in a society that had been stable for five hundred years and by all rights should have remained stable for another five hundred. The cultural shocks devolved into political and economic shocks as the new Asgardian culture of the Jarnfolk resisted the common ties of clan loyalty and vendetta and instead pursued a new path with few roots in the old structure. This soft rebellion against the received wisdom of the Jarnfolk’s forefathers continues to this day with an uncertain future ahead…”

_Dr. Augustin Durante is Calderon Professor of History at Protector’s College, Taurus. He specializes in the cultures of the pre-Tellurian Periphery and is an expert on the Reunification War._


End file.
